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* DB/C Newsletter *
* July 1994 *
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Editor's Notes
In this month's newsletter, we had hoped to report that the PL/B Standard
had been approved by ANSI, but alas, we have no such information to report.
Maybe next month.
We had also hoped to summarize the product descriptions of software
applications written in DB/C, but the volume of information is still small.
Therefore, we will delay that summary until a later newsletter.
AGAIN - please FAX, mail or email any product descriptions you have about
your applications written in DB/C. We will publish this information on our
World Wide Web (WWW) server on the Internet. When we have a critical mass of
information available on our WWW server, we will announce its availability via
several electronic methods. The electronic exposure may or may not provide
you with additional customers, but it certainly can't hurt.
This month's article is more philosophical than technical. It is about
the future of DB/C. I hope it is informative and helpful.
don.wills@swc.com
The Future of DB/C
What is DATABUS? What is DB/C? What is PL/B? These are questions
typically asked by a potential customer when he is told about DB/C. In many
cases, the answers to these questions do not satisfy the potential customer.
The major problem when trying to sell DB/C is trying to get potential customers
to evaluate DB/C on its technical merits, and not to dismiss it because they
have never heard of it. The future of DB/C depends on acceptance by new
customers, so if DB/C is to survive and grow, this problem must be solved.
Before we explore the future of DB/C specifically, let's look at the more
general question - what is the future of DATABUS (now officially called PL/B)?
In my humble opinion, the future of PL/B is not bright.
Datapoint, the original author of DATABUS and the company with the largest
aggregate sales of DATABUS over the years, is no longer interested in DATABUS.
To my knowledge, there are no programmers in Datapoint working on future
versions of DATABUS. They have one part-time contractor supporting existing
customers, but that is the extent of their technical commitment to DATABUS.
Datapoint's sales of DATABUS have dwindled over the years and it is well known
that the primary owner of Datapoint stock will make whatever cuts are necessary
to continue to shrink the company so that no capital is lost. The small
research and development budget still in place at Datapoint is focused on
projects completely unrelated to DATABUS or even to business data processing.
Sunbelt Computer Systems and Subject, Wills & Company are probably the
next largest vendors of PL/B-based compilers. (We can't call our products
DATABUS compilers without giving attribution to Datapoint's trademark claim on
the name DATABUS - hereby given.) Both Sunbelt and SWC are actively promoting
their products. Both companies are actively developing new versions of their
products. PL/B would seem to be alive and well in these companies, but the
problem is that as Sunbelt and SWC have added features to their products, the
products have diverged to such an extent that there is very little portability
between DB/C and the Sunbelt compiler unless you are willing to limit your
programs to strict PL/B conformance.
There have been numerous other vendors of DATABUS compilers. Almost all
have ceased selling their compiler - either because the company ceased to exist
or because they only use it for in-house development. There are still two or
three other companies actively marketing DATABUS compilers, but very little
development of new features is taking place. The sales of DATABUS compilers
that only provide Datapoint conversion tools will undoubtedly fall to zero as
the remainder of the Datapoint sites around the world convert off of Datapoint
hardware. This is the difference between Sunbelt/SWC and the other compiler
vendors: when the Datapoint conversions are done, the other compiler vendors
won't have any source of revenue to support new operating environments or
development of new features.
Therefore, the only viable future for PL/B-based compilers belongs to
Sunbelt and Subject, Wills & Company. Both Sunbelt and SWC have actively
enhanced their compilers for many years. In fact, a majority of the verbs in
DB/C 8.0 are not contained in the PL/B Standard. Sunbelt also provides many
enhancements above and beyond the PL/B Standard. This is very good for users
of DB/C and the Sunbelt compiler who don't mind being non-portable. But if
you are truly interested in portability, you can't use any advanced features.
The reason companies want to stay portable is to protect their investment in
case they need to move to a new compiler. In reality, if companies are only
concerned about portability and survivability of reliable vendors for their
programming language - without regard to technical details - they most
certainly will throw out DB/C, DATABUS, Sunbelt, etc. in favor of C, C++
or COBOL.
This means that PL/B Standard programming (without using any features
specific to DB/C or others), if it exists today at all, will certainly die
out in the not too distant future. This also means that sales of DB/C and of
the Sunbelt compiler will grow or shrink based upon factors other than their
claim of conformance with the PL/B Standard.
As you probably already know, DB/C has made major advances in portable
GUI programming. As far as we can tell, other portable GUI products have not
fared well - products like XVT have not caught on and other products like
PowerBuilder still have only shipped Windows 3.1 versions. The GUI portability
feature is just one example of how DB/C is far ahead of the "major" languages.
Other advanced features are: dynamic linking, operating system file name
mapping for portability, built-in SQL support, and more. Features like these
will continue to attract interest in DB/C.
So what is the future of DB/C? Subject, Wills & Company will continue to
support and enhance DB/C for many years to come. When evaluated on its merits,
DB/C will compare very favorably with any other language targeted at business
application development. SWC will not link the fortune of DB/C with PL/B.
When DB/C 9.0 is released, you will not see any reference to Datapoint, DATABUS
or PL/B in the marketing literature. What you will see are claims of technical
superiority when compared with such products as Microsoft Access, PowerBuilder,
COBOL and the other competitors of DB/C.
The future of DB/C is bright as long as technical merits are relevant
and the computer industry does not become a heard of lemmings jumping off of
a (Microsoft) cliff. Stay with us - you won't be disappointed.
DB/C Class Schedule
The next DB/C class is scheduled for the end of September, 1994.
Actual dates will be finalized next month. The class is held in the Oak
Brook, Illinois office of Subject, Wills & Company. For more information,
contact Judi Tamkevic at dbc@swc.com or at (708) 572-0240.